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Blogging for gun safety reform and changing the conversation about the role of guns and gun violence in our communities. Common sense gun laws and gun safety reform and gun rights are not mutually exclusive.

Las Vegas is known for its’ casinos, hotels and restaurants where people go to ( hopefully) make some money and spend some money on shows featuring singers and other stars.

It is also now known for the cost of loose gun laws, bump fire stocks and lasting emotional, physical and health care costs for the victims and survivors of the nation’s deadliest mass shooting. The dead have been buried, leaving families with the actual financial cost of a funeral. And now the families and friends are spending their time and energy wondering why this happened to their loved one and how they will spend the rest of their lives without that person.

The sounds of weeping.

The survivors are traumatized and many will need counseling. They can’t get the scene out of their heads- the noise of the gunfire- the noise of the screaming- the noise of the dead and injured- the noise of people running for their lives-the noise of the sirens. And some will face astronomical financial costs as long as they live.

In this article there is a video where the sounds of screaming and the rapid fire of the gun are heard. It was frightening.

The sound of Congress doing something about changing gun laws after the massacre?

Silence.

The sound of the media 4 weeks out- silence.

We have already forgotten the Las Vegas shooting.

This is an American tragedy.

The victims and survivors have not forgotten. Time will tell if their voices will join the thousands of others who have experienced the loss of a loved one or friend, the injuries from bullets or the trauma of being at the scene of the shooting.

It is inexcusable that we have allowed them to get away with ignoring their responsibilities for protecting the public against insanely loose gun laws and allowing just about anyone to purchase just about any gun or accessory they want because they are cowards.

There will be a cost for this abrogation of responsibilities.

Congress members should pay with their seats. The rest of us are paying with our lives and the loss of loved ones.

SIEGEL: First, had you experienced anything like this, and did you sense your training kicking in at all during the – during this?

LACY: I’ve never experienced anything at this magnitude. I’ve seen a lot in 20 years in Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Panama, Turkey but nothing like this where you’re supposed to be out having a good time and you don’t expect something like this to happen. My training kicked in immediately, and I bolted and looked towards the – where the shots were being fired from. And then I started trying to assess the wounded and trying to get people out of the area so we could take care of those that needed help and get those others that could move out of the area so they were not – no longer in harm’s way.

The man was in the military and said this to the interviewer:

LACY: You know, if you want to describe what war is, I guess this is what looks like war but on a civilian scale. These people didn’t deserve it. And I’m just glad that there were true Americans that stayed behind and helped those that were wounded and helped the individuals that were deceased.

It was worse than war- on a civilian scale, as he said.

This woman came close to death. She describes the scene– listen to her, Congress members. Or can’t you bear the thought of the blood and carnage? Her family talks of how much this will cost and whether they will be able to afford the cost. Loss of work, loss of mobility, loss of functioning in everyday life, loss of freedom, loss of security. From the article:

At the hospital, people were lined up along the wall. “Just so many people, just stacked, and blood—just tons and tons of blood,” Sheppard said. She was lying on a gurney next to a girl who had been shot multiple times in the leg. “I was breathing really hard, and I was like, screaming and making noise, and I was really, really, really, really, really, really struggling.” She hollered that she was going to throw up, was given a bucket, and began vomiting blood. An X-ray machine was brought into the room. She heard someone say, “Surgery, immediately.” Her last memory before she woke up, five days later, is of a doctor—no one at the hospital knows who it was—grabbing her face with both hands, looking in her eyes, and telling her, “You’re gonna fucking make it. You’re gonna fucking do this.”

One of the misperceptions that accompanies a mass shooting is that those affected are divided into the victims, who are killed, and the survivors, who live. The news cycle moves on—as it already has, a month later—and the collective notion, insofar as anyone who wasn’t there or didn’t lose a loved one thinks about it, is that those who survived are in the process of moving on, too. But, for those who were injured, existence is transformed.

“…and I was, like, screaming and making noise….”

The silence of Congress is deafening.

Whose rights come first? The right for anyone to own and carry any gun wherever they want and to shoot innocent people? Or the right to live free from gun violence in our communities?